The Sweet Scent of Murder

by Susan P. Baker

  I stepped over the remnants of the dog blood and went into her bedroom. Surely she wouldn’t put it under the mattress. Something made a noise in the stillness and it wasn’t my palpitating heart. It sounded like it came from the kitchen. Were the floorboards creaking? I hadn’t heard it moments earlier, but it seemed now somebody was inside with me.

  Holding my breath, I snapped out my light and crouched down beside the bed. Whoever it was apparently didn’t expect to find anyone around because they weren’t being very quiet. I tried to make myself very small in the darkness, not an easy feat at five-foot-ten, but I could try.

  I heard a bump and then, “Oww—shit.”

  Candy. I turned on my light. “In the bedroom, Candy,” I hollered and waved the flashlight in her direction. When she came in, I held the light on her like a spot and she was the star of the stage. “What the hell are you doing? You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “I know, Mavis, but like I thought I’d help by watching outside. You didn’t even know I was there, huh? Pretty good, huh?”

  “I’ll ‘pretty good, huh’ you, when we get out of here. If you’re watching outside, why aren’t you out there?”

  “It was getting, you know, really creepy. You’ve been in here an hour.” She rubbed her forehead where a lump was forming.

  I shined the flashlight on my wristwatch. “Have not. It’s barely been fifteen minutes,” I said. “And stop whining.”

  “Like it seemed like an hour. Besides, I thought I could help.”

  “You can help by going home.”

  “C’mon, let me stay, please?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have time for your foolishness. Don’t you realize that what we’re doing is illegal? You could get into serious trouble. You could be sent to jail and your mother would have to come get you out and then you’d probably have to quit working for me—which might not be a bad idea.”

  Not listening, Candy flipped on a small flashlight and went over to the chest of drawers. “Have you searched these drawers yet?”

  “I don’t believe you. I ought to fire you, young lady. Do you know this is breaking and entering? Burglary, my dear. A first-degree felony—burglary of a habitation.”

  “Only if we’re attempting to do another crime, Mavis. Like I called and asked Gillian this afternoon. Have you searched here?”

  “You what?”

  She shined her light on my face. “Well, I wanted to know like what kind of trouble we could get into. I called her for your own good.”

  “I’m going nuts here, Candy. I could swear that I heard you say that you told someone outside the office that we were coming over to break into this house.”

  “Don’t worry. I invoked the attorney-client privilege. I told her, you know, to send you a bill for her advice.”

  “Jesus Christ. Just wait until we get out of here. You’ll be lucky to see tomorrow.” I continued my search. I had better things to do than fuss at her. I wanted to find what we were looking for and get the hell out.

  “So like should I look in this chest or what?”

  “Yeah, but just because I let you that doesn’t mean everything’s all right.”

  “That’s cool,” she said and turned her light out of my eyes and toward the chest of drawers. “Jesus it’s hot in here. I don’t know how you stood it this long.”

  I ignored her last statement. After I got my vision back, we spent the next few minutes—I don’t know how many—carefully picking and pulling at Annette’s things, trying to leave no evidence that we’d been there. No luck in the bedroom.

  We searched in between the folded towels and sheets in the bathroom cabinet. Under the mat on the floor. Between the shower curtain and the liner. In the dirty clothes hamper. Behind the toilet. In the medicine chest.

  We hit the spare bedroom, but since it was sparsely furnished, it only took a couple of minutes to discover it concealed nothing except lots of yarn and crochet hooks in a bag on the floor.

  Finally, we ended up in the living room where Annette had been attacked. We pulled up the braided rug and checked under the coffee tables to see if she’d taped it underneath. I didn’t really think she’d had the time, but it was worth a try. Candy stuck her hands down the sides and up the lining of the sofa and came up with spare change, lint, and debris under her fingernails. I tackled the swivel rocker. And there it was, between the seat cushion and the arm, scrunched up like she had stuffed it down there in a hurry. I realized he would have found it had I not so rudely interrupted him. Lucky for me. Too bad for him.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I emptied the contents of the envelope onto the floor and we sat down in the middle of it. Candy held my larger, police-style flashlight while I straightened the papers, smoothing the folds. There were three separate sets of insurance claim forms from National Insurance Trust.

  “I don’t recognize these people’s names, but Annette told me Mr. Lawson was investigating claims,” I said. “He was suspicious—there were too many.”

  “So . . . ” Candy said.

  “So—the forms she was going to give me were the ones Mr. Lawson had been, checking out. Look, someone’s made notations in pencil, not a real person. God, it’s stuffy in here.” I flipped through the set on top. A life insurance policy for two hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars. Enough of those and a person could take early retirement. I smiled at Candy. “Do you realize what this is?”

  “Some kind of insurance junk? Like what does that have to do with Jeanine and Tommy?” Candy whispered. Her face was as yellow as a grapefruit in the glow of the flashlight. With her green hair, she was an eerie sight.

  “Nothing. It has nothing to do with Jeanine and Tommy. It’s fraud. Someone was defrauding the insurance company out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.”

  “Wow. So that’s why Miss Jensen got clobbered. She found out about it.”

  “That’s why Mr. Lawson got killed. Or at least one of the reasons.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Yes, I think I know what this whole thing has been about. It’s too bad Annette can’t tell us what she knows. With any luck, she’ll pull out of it and confirm my suspicions.”

  “Aren’t you going to take them to the police?” Candy asked. Margaret, had she been along, would have known better than to ask that question.

  I grinned. “Eventually. Meanwhile, let’s get these papers back to the office where we can study them so we can prove who it is.”

  We picked ourselves up off the floor. I was about to stoop down for the papers so we could make our way out to the kitchen when we heard the back door ease open.

  Candy clutched my forearm, her fingernails sinking into my flesh. She whispered, “Holy shit.”

  I snapped out my light a second time and Candy did the same.

  Why hadn’t I forced Candy to go home? My heart beat like a snare drum solo in my ears. The kitchen floor creaked. I pushed Candy toward the rocker, which was a dark shadow, and she backed over beside it, shrinking to fit between it and the end table.

  At another creaking sound, I searched frantically for a hiding place. It was too late to run to another room. The living room was sparsely furnished and left me no choice but to get down beside the sofa, which I did as quickly and quietly as possible. The next thing I knew, a light beamed on the far wall. Oh, how I wished the police had given me back my gun.

  Oh, how I wished I’d never gone snooping. A position bagging groceries seemed very attractive right about then.

  In the back flash from the light, I saw someone but couldn’t tell who it was. The light moved. I sucked my stomach in and leaned back against the wall, crouching down behind the sofa wing as much as possible.

  I followed the light with my eyes as it swept past me and back again. There were some rustling noises and footsteps and the room grew dark. I stayed where I was and prayed that Candy would also. The minutes crept by. Someone moved about in other parts of the house. It grew diffi
cult to breathe. My blouse dripped with perspiration; my stomach overflowed with fear.

  I risked sticking my head out and peered through the corner between the V of the arm and the sofa wing. There wasn’t enough light to make out Candy. The stranger’s light in the other room barely illuminated the hall.

  It seemed like years later when the light came back in our direction. I reared back as it swept the room again and stopped. I had to see what was going on so I peeked out and saw a shadowy figure wearing some kind of hood. He or she crouched over the insurance papers I’d left on the floor, the flashlight stuck under his or her arm. The light hit right between the rocker and the end table, on Candy’s face.

  Concentrating intently on the papers on the floor, the intruder hadn’t yet seen Candy. The flash illuminated an expression of stark terror: her mouth hung open, her eyes large and wide, whites shining. Candy gasped like a drowning victim coming up for air the last time. A voice I didn’t stop to identify said, “You. Stand up where you are.”

  As Candy started to rise, her hand swept toward the lamp on the end table. I wanted to cry out to her not to do it—I had just seen him, her, it—whatever, pull a gun—but no words came out. Everything happened at breakneck speed. A crash and a gunshot both echoed off the walls of the little shut-up house. A flashlight lay on the floor pointed away from Candy so I couldn’t see her.

  “No!” I hollered as I leapt across the room. I hit the coffee table in front of the couch and fell against the attacker’s knees, bringing him down. I lay there for a couple of seconds with my cheek against the coarse fabric of his pants before reaching over my head to feel for his arms and the gun. He must have been stunned for as long as I was because he seemed to recover just as slowly and began kicking me at the same time as I groped for the gun. In the dark, with the flashlight pointed against the far wall, I still couldn’t see much. I hollered to Candy just about the same time as his foot caught me in the stomach.

  “Run, Candy!”

  She didn’t respond. I knew then she was dead. Dumb kid. Why couldn’t she have just done what I told her?

  I groped my way up his body, pulling at his clothes as he continued to kick and struggle. There was a familiar smell. I got hold of his right wrist and jerked it, trying to twist it outward where it would hurt. I figured he didn’t have hold of the gun or he would have shot me. About that time, the gun went off again and I could see just for an instant as it flashed. I swear I almost peed in my panties.

  There was a lot of rustling and footsteps. I remembered my flashlight and while I held on to his wrist with all my might, I groped around for it. We struggled on the floor in the dark with just the glow of the light near our feet. To reach that flashlight to use as a weapon, I’d have to let go of his arm. I wasn’t about to do that when the gun was at the end of it.

  He belted me with his other fist, but it caught me on the shoulder and didn’t do much damage except cause me to fall onto my back. He swung himself on top of me, panting like a mad dog, his breath smelling worse than a dirty ashtray. While he clutched my left hand, with my right I shoved at his chest and found my flashlight, boosting my confidence. That’s not to say I forgot who had a gun and who didn’t—I didn’t—but I’m a big girl and pretty strong. I clobbered whoever it was right in the kisser with my flashlight. I’m sure I busted his lip. While he was recovering, I rammed him right in the nuts with my knee.

  His grunt and groan confirmed that my attacker was, in fact, a he, though I had little doubt by that time. Momentarily he failed to move his body, but jerked his hand down pointing the gun at my face. I pushed it away just as it went off again, echoing loudly next to my ear. I threw him off me into the wall and started pounding with all my might, my anger at Candy’s death giving me strength. He dropped the gun and reached for it again, but I wouldn’t let his hand near it. He started hitting at me, but it didn’t do much good. I was madder than hell because he’d killed a girl who was like a daughter to me.

  I battered him with my flashlight and fist until he seemed to weaken. Putting my knee on his chest to hold him down, I seized his throat, my fingernails digging in, the stench of his breath stronger than ever. His clothing smelled like a lit cigar. I groped until finding the gun and was about to switch it over to my right hand and blow his brains out when I heard Candy’s voice.

  “Mavis. What should I do?”

  Relief flooded me. “I’ve got him, Candy. Grab your flashlight.” I had the gun in my right hand as I started to tear the hood off his face, but I must have relaxed too much when I heard Candy’s voice, because he pushed me backward and made his escape. I would have fired at him but didn’t know where Candy was. I didn’t want to shoot her.

  A loud bonk sounded. A moment later, another bonk. I ran to the kitchen just as the light came on. Candy stood in the doorway with a flashlight in one hand and a big cast-iron cornbread pan in the other. The perpetrator lay on the floor. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a few minutes.

  I grinned, never so overjoyed about anything in my life. “Why didn’t you answer when I hollered at you?” My ears still rang from the earlier gunshot.

  Candy grinned back. “All you said was ‘run.’ I was gonna, too, but like when I got to the kitchen I thought of getting this iron pan off the stove. I’d seen it when I came in. Besides, I was afraid he would have shot at me again. The next thing I knew, he came right at me so I, like, let him have it.”

  “Twice for good measure,” I said, laughing, and put my arms around her. “I thought he’d killed you.”

  Candy said, “Like you would have been sorry, wouldn’t you, Mavis?”

  I pulled back. “Of course I would have been sorry, but let’s not get mushy about it, kid.”

  “It’s okay, Mavis, you don’t have to say anything else. Are we going to see who it is?” She stepped toward the body.

  “I’m pretty sure I know, but you want the honors?” I held the pistol with both hands and pointed it in his direction in case he was playing possum.

  Candy leaned down and tugged at the mask. When it came off, we saw that it was exactly as I thought. The winner of the ugly man contest, Kelby McAfee, who looked a lot worse than he had the day I met him.

  Candy backed toward me. “Who’s that?”

  “That, my dear, is the man who has been stealing tons of bucks from the insurance company. How about running out to my car and getting my cell so I can call Captain Milton?”

  “Hey, I’ve got my mobile right here.” Candy whipped her own cell phone from her back pocket and handed it to me.

  “Kid, you could have gotten us killed if this had rung while he had the gun.”

  “Like, give me some credit, would you, Mavis? I turned it off before I came inside.”

  I made a call to the police department and told dispatch I needed to speak to Captain Milton, giving Candy’s number. After he called me back, I called Ben and told him where we were. And after that, Candy and I pulled out kitchen chairs and sat down to wait. I kept the gun steady on McAfee the whole ten minutes or so it took for the street in front of Annette's house to fill up with police cars.

  Chapter Thirty

  I would be exaggerating if I said Captain Milton congratulated me on solving Harrison Lawson’s murder, but he did at least give me a little credit. When he arrived, Milton had a uniform take McAfee into custody, which came as a big relief. That gun had gotten heavy after a while so I was glad to hand it over.

  He then lectured Candy about how irresponsible she had been to place herself in danger like that and sent her home after she agreed to go down to the police station the next day when school let out and make a statement.

  “Can I go, too, Captain? I feel like I’m going to fall on my face if I don’t get some rest.”

  “Not yet, Mavis,” the captain said. “Let’s go into the living room and sit down, shall we?”

  I knew that wasn’t a genuine request, so I obeyed after grabbing a paper towel from the roll in the kitchen and dabbing at my
wounds.

  When the captain turned on the living room lights, we found a room in great disarray and insurance documents lying helter-skelter across the floor. He grunted like an old boar.

  “I think you’ll find the motive for murder in those insurance documents, Captain,” I said, gathering them and handing them over.

  The captain righted a chair and sat down. I got the rocker. Ben looked over the captain’s shoulder. “What are they?”

  “Proof of insurance fraud.” Something about the situation triggered a desire for a cigarette. Nothing would taste as good at that moment. Just one cigarette, inhale deeply, and exhale a long stream of smoke that in my imagination would spell out some wonderful words about me like in comic strips. But that wasn’t about to happen. “Anybody got a stick of gum?”

  The captain stared from the papers to me. “You want to tell me about it?” His tone spoke volumes.

  “I knew it was McAfee who killed Mr. Lawson, but he wasn’t in it alone, though he and Hilary had different motives. I knew she was a depraved woman, but she already had lots of money. She didn’t need more.”

  “Mrs. Lawson?” the captain asked.